WWE Battleground PPV Review: Next Time the Lights Go Out, Leave Them Out.

Well for those of you who didn’t get the opportunity to see last nights Pay-per-view, WWE Battleground, you saved fifty dollars you’d be pleading to have back now. One match on the whole card saved the show from being a complete disappointment.

The show opened up with the World Heavyweight Championship match between Rob Van Dam and Alberto Del Rio. This wasn’t much of a surprise as the WHC belt has become about as prestigious as the European championship. The match was labeled a “hardcore rules match”, which was kinda cool to see WWE return to the term since we have a gazillion other matches with different names, but are all just a hardcore match at the end of the day.

[pullquote_left]One match on the whole card saved the show from being a complete disappointment.[/pullquote_left]What hurt this match the most was the fact we’re all aware RVD is here on a part-time basis and he was never going to get the belt. However there is no babyface available to challenge Del Rio at this point and RVD was the only option. Good luck selling a WHC match once Van Dam is gone.

In a sequence of very slow, drug out, and boring moves, Del Rio put the arm bar on RVD with his arm stuck in a chair, forcing Van Dam to tap out. Personally I hoped we were finally going to get a break from Del Rio. He is insanely boring to watch, and I gotta believe the general audience really couldn’t care less about him. None the less, your winner and still champ, Alberto Del Rio.

The next couple matches were nothing special. The Real Americans defeated Santino Marrella and The Great Khali. How Kahli is even getting TV time is beyond me, but a PPV match? The guy can barely walk, let alone wrestle, not interesting whatsoever.

Curtis Axel beat R-Truth… obviously, R-Truth has been painfully irrelevant since he arrived in WWE, and I don’t think anyone believed he had a shot in the world of winning that match.

By far the best match of the night was The Shield vs The Rhodes family. Dusty was down in the corner of his sons opposite Dean Ambrose of the Shield. Cody is so much better in the ring than half the locker room. I totally forgot how much I liked him since he left. In a quick, well orchestrated, sequence of events Cody hit Cross Rhodes on Seth Rollins for the win. The place fricking erupted. I literally got goosebumps during the match. WWE would be smart to use these two further, they’re gonna need damage control after two consecutive poor PPV’s.

The CM Punk/Ryback match was good, but didn’t really have much flare to it. It was also spoiled with a poor ending, sort of feels like the writers were thinking too far into these finishes, or not thinking about them at all. You can’t take anything from Punk or Ryback though, both put on an awesome match. Being Heyman walked out unscathed, you would assume the feud is probably not over, which sort of sucks because I think everyone is waiting for Punk to step in on the Triple H-McMahon power situation.

The final Match was for the vacated WWE Championship. Daniel Bryan competed against Randy Orton for the umpteenth time and was basically the same match we’ve seen repeatedly over the past month and we’ll probably see again next month. Once again, this match fell victim to poor writing and ended ambiguously, to say the least. Big Show came out and knocked out Daniel Bryan, a couple of refs, Randy Orton… he knocked everyone out. I’m so confused and lost at his point. I have no clue what the hell is going on. There was no winner of the match, the title is still vacant, apparently Big Show hates everyone now, and Triple H is nowhere to be seen. So we all spent money to see a glorified episode of RAW, and tonight RAW (that’s the free show…) will probably be better and tie up more loose ends then the PPV…awesome

Like I said earlier, if you didn’t see the show, it’s like you won money. Aside from the Rhodes/Shield match, the best part of the night was when the power went out and the “please stand by” screen came on for over 5 minutes. It took all of 30 seconds before the Twittersphere moved from irritated to irrationally hostile, definitely my favorite point of the evening. Probably should have left the lights off at this point.

My overall rating I give this PPV is 3 out of 10. All three stars were won by The Rhodes family and The Shield.